Most people, the vast majority in fact, lead the lives that circumstances have thrust upon them, and though some repine, looking upon themselves as round pegs in square holes, and think that if things had been different they might have made a much better showing, the greater part accept their lot, if not with serenity, at all events with resignation. They are like train-cars travelling forever on the selfsame rails. They go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, inevitably, till they can go no longer and then are sold as scrap-iron. It is not often that you find a man who has boldly taken the course of his life into his own hands. When you do, it is worth while having a good look at him." (Opening paragraph from Somerset Maugham's story "The Lotus Eater")
Which is what I was reminded of when, during my then still fairly frequent trips up north, I met a fellow-German who had come to Australia four years before me, had married, had two sons, and had for fifty years "like a train-car travelled forever on the selfsame rails".
When I questioned him about the interstate number plates on his car, he explained to me that he'd told his wife that now that he was into his seventies and both their sons had grown up and he was no longer needed, he wanted time to himself. With this he handed her the keys to the house, and travelled north.
I admired and slightly envied him for the ease with which he had escaped from half a century of domesticity. As Maugham wrote, "It is not often that you find a man who has boldly taken the course of his life into his own hands". What would he do next? Seven years in Tibet? Kon-Tiki-ing across the South Pacific? Lotus-eating in exotic Bali? Walking the road to Samarkand? Living in a grass-hut on a tropical coral island?
His end was far more prosaic: he once again succumbed to domesticity by buying a house which was far too big for him - proving that he had been a lot more cashed up than poor old Wilson and could have done virtually anything! - and staying put in the one place so as not miss his appointment in Samarra because only seven years later he was dead.
He died with all that music still inside him. I hope that his gravestone bears the German inscription "Der Mensch ist ein Gewohnheitstier".
